Comedy Central has struck out in its attempts at a worthy companion to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart , its nightly newscast parody. So it's matching host Stewart with one of his own correspondents in a Daily spinoff: Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report arrives Monday (11:30 p.m. ET/PT) and will follow Stewart Mondays through Thursdays.

On the Colbert Report (pronounced kohl-BARE ra-PORE), Colbert will play a bombastic character familiar to cable-news junkies. "Shows like O'Reilly or Scarborough or even to some extent Aaron Brown's are more about the personality of the host and less about the headlines," Colbert says. "My show is really about opinions; it's about bluster and personality."

Colbert, 41, says his persona, honed on Stewart's show, is an amalgam based on "the manliness of Stone Phillips" and his "thick lacrosse-player's neck" and Geraldo Rivera's "sense of mission" as a "crusading warrior" of journalism. But Bill O'Reilly, an "admirable" talent — "I watch (him) with my mouth open," Colbert says — is clearly the model for his satire.

Producer Stewart and colleagues made a one-line pitch to Comedy chief Doug Herzog: "Our version of the O'Reilly Factor with Stephen Colbert," says Herzog, who agreed to an eight-week tryout without a pilot. "It's a tremendous companion piece to The Daily Show" yet distinct from it, he says.

The Report will be more loosely structured and can stray from political news. Colbert says, "Jon would never talk about Britney's baby," but Colbert might rail against it as "Hollywood's liberal elite dropping the ball on American values" by "knocking up pop stars."

But like Stewart, he'll feature guests, often from the world of journalism: Monday's premiere features Dateline NBC's Phillips himself.

A South Carolina native who worked on Saturday Night Live, ABC's Dana Carvey Show and Comedy's own Strangers with Candy, Colbert has been a Daily Show correspondent since 1997. And another veteran may get his own series: The network announced plans this week for a pilot, Red State Diaries, featuring comedian Lewis Black, whose rants are a Daily staple.